Our continent must be prepared to defend itself, by combining the best of its two most influential traditions<\/p>\n
Should we all be Gaullists now? In the language of France\u2019s most important European partner, the answer is \u201cJein!<\/em>\u201d (a German word combining ja <\/em>for yes and nein <\/em>for no). Yes, Emmanuel Macron has been right to warn us ever since he became France\u2019s president in 2017 that, discerning a long-term trend of US disengagement, Europe should be ready to defend itself<\/a>. Now, confronted with Donald Trump, a rogue US president putting in question an 80-year-old American commitment to the defence of Europe against Russia, lifelong Euro-Atlanticists like me must acknowledge that we need not just a Europe with more hard power \u2013 something for which I have always argued \u2013 but also the real possibility of European \u201cstrategic autonomy<\/a>\u201d. Oui,<\/em> Monsieur le Pr\u00e9sident<\/em>, you were right.<\/p>\n Yet en m\u0207me temps<\/em> (at the same time), <\/em>to deploy Macron\u2019s signature trope, we should answer \u201cNon<\/em>\u201d. For De Gaulle, a great man of his time, believed that defence should be the exclusive province of the nation state; that the emerging European Community should be a Europe of states (a disunited version of the European Union to which today\u2019s hard-right populist nationalist parties dream of returning); that Britain should be excluded from the European project (hence his famous \u201c<\/a>Non!<\/a><\/em>\u201d<\/a> <\/em>to British membership in that emerging community); and that Europe should be constructed as a counterweight to the US, having close relations with Russia and China.<\/p>\n Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our continent must be prepared to defend itself, by combining the best of its two most influential traditions Should we all be Gaullists now? In the language of France\u2019s most important European partner, the answer is \u201cJein!\u201d (a German word combining ja for yes and nein for no). Yes, Emmanuel Macron has been right to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}